From fall 2021 to summer 2022, the College Completion Network conducted virtual focus groups with administrators at 47 2-year and broad-access 4-year colleges with the goal of better understanding the advising policies, practices, and programs (hereafter referred to as “strategies”) that colleges use to support student success. Simultaneously, the network conducted a systematic review of the research literature on advising strategies, summarizing the evidence for a wide range of advising strategies that have been the focus of research conducted during the past 2 decades. This brief considers the findings from each study side by side, distilling gaps between policy and practice and research.

The brief answers the following three key questions:

• Which advising strategies have strong evidence of success and are widely used?
• Which information and advising strategies are widely used but have little or no evidence of success?
• Which information and advising strategies have strong evidence of success but are not widely used?

Policymakers and practitioners may use the findings from this gaps analysis to make decisions about which advising strategies to implement, adapt, or discontinue. Likewise, researchers can use the findings to prioritize areas for future research.

View the brief: Advising for College Success: Next Steps for Policymakers, Practitioners, and Researchers (1.2 MB PDF)